Google Places Ranking Factors – The PhD Version

Bizible, a start-up that makes local marketing software for SMBs, approached me recently* to preview the results of a Google Places Ranking Factors study they had conducted and I was intrigued enough by their findings to share some of them here.

Bizible’s team is made up of former Bing AdCenter guys and counts a PhD and a stats expert on their staff, so their study is a more scientific attempt to figure out what’s going on with Google Places than your typical “here’s what some SEOs think” kind of thing.

For methodology, they studied 30 potential ranking factors by querying approximately 20 cities across approximately 20 local categories (about 400 search terms), looking 30 results deep in Google Places rankings. They looked at each factor in isolation and then looked at them in combination to see if there were any multiplier effects.

While there are likely some holes in their methodology – for example, changing physical location of the browser might lead to different results (Bizible used a variety of IP addresses to try to mimic this), there’s no accounting for personalization or Google SPyW results and their approach sounds like something a quant geek might approve of. Their site has more detail on their methodology if you’re into that kind of thing. Also note the research was conducted before Google’s Venice Update which changed the way Google ranks URLs for local queries.

So what did them fancy PhD-types discover? Some interesting stuff.

The Bizible data shows a big difference in ranking factors between improving ranking when the local result were integrated in the main SERP page and when it did not make it in the 7 pack/5 pack/universal results.

Top 3 Factors To Improve Ranking For Pages In Integrated Results

Places page category matches a broader category than that of the search (search for “pizza”, Places category = restaurant). This only applies of course if there is a broader category. This applies for both primary and secondary Places page categories.

The search category appears in the business name (“Rocky’s Pizza” for a “Seattle pizza” search).

The search category appears in the “at a glance” section.

Top 5 Factors To Improve Ranking For Pages Not In Integrated Results

Having 5 or more Google reviews.

Location term in “at a glance” section. (Seattle in “Seattle pizza”)

Category term in Google review content. (pizza in “Seattle pizza” is in the contents of the Google reviews)

Category term in business description.

Category term in “at a glance.”

Other Interesting Nuggets

Having a physical address in the city of the search did not turn out to be a strong ranking factor, only distance from centroid seemed to matter. So, if you are just outside the city and your address is not officially in the city, this didn’t seem to hurt any more than a business whose address was in the city, but just as far from the centroid.

That said, for every mile away from the centroid, ranking dropped by .4 (4/10ths) of a position.

An average Google Review score of 1 or less significantly hurt ranking (as expected), although the incremental increase in ranking as the review score increased from 2->3->4->5 ranking was negligible (interesting, no?).

The presence of a business description did not help ranking, although having the search category in the business description did help ranking.

Getting your 5th Google review significantly helped ranking, although incremental reviews between 1 and 4 and above 5 had a very small impact on ranking (you have to get 100+ of reviews for it to help ranking any more than just 5, so good news for much-loved businesses and review spammers).

According to Aaron Bird, CEO and Night Janitor at Bizible:

“For the integrated results, we found that on average, implementing all of these factors showed an increase in rank by about 2 positions, which is fairly significant for a 3/5/7 pack. For the non-integrated results, we found that on average, implementing all of these factors showed an increase in rank by about 9 positions, which good as well, given that we only went 30 results deep.”

I encourage you to review the initial report, Google Places Optimization – Local Ranking Factors (nice keyword targeting guys) at Bizible’s site. Over the next couple of weeks, they will be adding four more reports on different aspects of the results and Bird told me they may incorporate post-Venice data in a future study.

If you haven’t updated your Google Places Page categorization by now, what are you waiting for?

*Note: the author is not affiliated professionally with Bizible.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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http://www.mijnbuitenspeelgoed.nl/ Buitenspeelgoed

Verry interesting! I’am going to test some of these tips, thanks for sharing!

Peter_Brown

Google recently mentioned that they’re now using considerations from the main link index when looking to rank a places page, would be interesting to see this study expended to see any correlation between the top ranking places page against their on-page & off-page.

ericmobley34

Very interesting. I’m happy to see some analysis on this subject using a more scientific approach. This is a nice summary, I think it will be worth it to read the entire report from Bizible as well.

It is kind of weird to see having 5 or more reviews is one of the top ranking factors since that can be so easily manipulated. Would think that there will come a day where reviews only help conversions but have low effect on rankings (think description meta tag).

http://twitter.com/YoungbloodJoe Joe Youngblood

these factors or correlated, not proven to be causing higher rankings. that said it was an interesting study and one i’ll be sure to bring up at this weeks DFWSEM meeting on Local SEO.

http://twitter.com/davidmihm davidmihm

Interesting study, thanks for sharing, Andrew. Couple comments on your high-level take (unfortunately I’m crazy busy today so I’ll have to dive into the actual study later in the week):

1) Given what we all know about category specificity and exact-match custom categories, I find it amazing that this study indicates a higher ranking for those businesses who use a generic category like “restaurant” ahead of “pizza.”
2) Given that the “at a glance” content is largely pulled from either traditional reviews or non-traditional reviews, seems like they found a much higher correlation for keywords in reviews than even your take lets on. This is probably the most interesting data point for me.
3) Location in city of search is still hugely important, from what I’ve seen (some of this is likely due to inbound anchor text) and I have a feeling that their data-driven approach is not “getting” this due to location-sensitivity on Google’s part. What have others seen in their client analyses?
4) From what I’ve seen, review volume as a ranking factor is completely relative to your competitors. There’s no magic # of 5 reviews if you are a restaurant in San Francisco, for example. That would be ridiculous. The benefit of getting 5 reviews is that your star rating becomes visible and it’s a click-through improver, however.

http://twitter.com/localseoguide Andrew Shotland

David,

I agree there are a number of potential flaws/questions in the data/methodology – as there would be with any study like this. I thought the approach was interesting enough to be worth sharing here. I’ll leave it to others smarter than myself to pick it apart. Your point re the # of reviews is spot on. Seems like this one falls more into the “correlation v. causation” bucket.

http://twitter.com/davidmihm davidmihm

I think it’s an important study & am not trying to pick apart methodological flaws (esp since I’m not a statistician nor have I had time to read the full study yet). It’s just getting harder to get a “standard” set of results to compare anymore.

As I said I found the keywords-in-reviews / non-traditional-reviews data point extremely interesting and that in and of itself is worthy of follow-up analysis.

Interested to hear what others think!

http://twitter.com/BirdsTweets Aaron Bird

David,
Re the # of reviews: Remember that this an average result for 22 cities and 22 categories. The average Places page has very few reviews and if you are one of the only businesses in the results that shows a star rating, this will likely drive clicks, which will help your ranking. Obviously, hotels and restaurants in larger cities will be an exception, but this study focused the average.

I’d be happy to do a deep dive with you on some of the data if you want to better understand how we came to these conclusions or if you are interested in a follow-up analysis (like the keywords in reviews, etc).

We are happy to work with experts in the Local SEO space to get the possible data and conclusions for the community. We’d love to have you (and others) participate in the next parts of our studies (reviews, citations, on-site, links/offsite) if you are interested in helping.

http://twitter.com/localseoguide Andrew Shotland

Totally agree re the “standard” set. Ultimately the only way to figure this out for every time of SERP is to be Google :)

Coach Cijaye

Thanx for sharing Andrew. I have definitely seen the correlation between reviews and the places listings being ranked. In fact I have also seen in the case where there are MANY listings, those with reviews often get top rank (regardless). I do agree with Eric it is sad that these reviews can be bought / manipulated and therefore they may not be quite so valuable – yet they are a still a reason that others are not seen. I am sure we will see this shift as more abuse occurs… Oh well – I still found the article valuable and have shared the link and top tips with my Online Marketers Club (hope you don’t mind). Thank you again.

http://www.facebook.com/CloudBoomers Julie Larson

Good article, Andrew! My 2 biggest take-a-ways were to get that 5th Google review and to be sure to include the search category in the business description.

Thank you for sharing!!! :)

http://twitter.com/localoptimizer Dave

Some years ago I was fortunate to participate in a study organized by Mike Blumenthal which was a little similar in methodology, was reviewed by a statistician, but smaller in scope. I think we reviewed 3 categories, had less cities and we went 100 deep into Places (then G Maps) results. Even now there is some overlap with regard to findings though Bizable’s is larger, more thorough and detailed.

I tend to believe in things like this in general, though my other efforts indicate some other factors that have impact. I see where Bizible will be looking at other factors…and I believe they will show other important criterion.

In my experience location from where you are searching within a metropolitan region has very very significant impact. This is mitigated by the type of product/service and the number of competitors within the region. Lots of pizza restaurants spread throughout a metropolitan region…lots less technology classes within a region.

Lots of factors to be considered.

Here is one little personal finding on what pretty important keyword phrase for one client. Over a couple of months I managed to move them from out of the PAC to into the PAC to the top of the PAC at #1 w/ over 5 G reviews for possibly the 2nd or 3rd most active search phrase w/ appropriate geo modifier. Additionally the client tends to rank #1 in PPC for that phrase.

Biggest take away so far–> Instead of traffic being roughly 50/50 organic/PPC we are now running about 75% organic//25% PPC. LOL take that Google you big $$ machine.

(gulp) probably shouldn’t have said that ;)

http://twitter.com/localseoguide Andrew Shotland

Dave, just forwarded your comment over to Sergey. He’s going to put in some 20% time just for you.

GoogleGuy1

Maybe these guys can put their money where their mouth is. If you search ‘local seo seattle’ or ‘local search marketing seattle’ in Google Places – they don’t show up. In fact, you can’t even find a listing for the company!

http://www.ehlinelaw.com/ Injury Lawyer

I have not found that reviews have any effect on ranking in Places.

http://twitter.com/WaterGlassPipe Water Glass Pipe

This is good article but all of the above we have to maintain our content very fresh and updated to get good result.glass water pipes

http://dagmarmarketing.com/ Chris Gregory

I always appreciate anyone putting in the time to do data analysis and share their findings. Having done my share of statistical analysis I would add the following – The data set of 20 listings and 30 ranking factors might be too small to draw conclusions from given the hundreds of factors Google takes into account. This certainly can be a starting point though.

For instance…in my experience I have seen gaining reviews in an “over time” pattern has significant impact on rank – everything else constant. It is possible that analyzing 20 accounts that all 20 could have had their reviews for months with no movement. I’m sure Bizable would agree with this but thought I would take that one point and give my take because I definitely think adding reviews over 5 in an ongoing way is a very significant factor.

http://gyitsakalakis.com/ Gyi Tsakalakis

Hi Michael,

Really? We have. I’m w/ David above though, it’s relative to competitors. Although, upon a cursory review, doesn’t look like a ton of PI firms in San Fran are sending clients to Places.

This may prove an interesting case study.

http://twitter.com/BirdsTweets Aaron Bird

Chris,

The “over time” pattern is one I have also seen (anecdotally) and when we do our study of reviews, we are considering adding this as a signal, as well as “review velocity” for having many recent reviews. Thanks for the input.

As for the data set, we analyzed a a little over 14,300 Places pages (22 cities x 22 categories x 30 results deep), and 30 ranking factors, so it was a statistically significant sample size.

http://www.yolkrecruitment.com/ Yolk Recruitment

One thing that doesn’t help your Google place ranking is verifying it. Since we verified ours we dropped off the map and everytime we make a small change to listing it requires us to verify it again. It’s getting very frustrating and Google has no really support line for these things.

ReynoldsPest

This is the first post I have seen on Google Places that has ever given me an useful insight, thank you for the post.

http://www.SmallBusinessOnlineCoach.com Matthew Hunt

Some good stuff in this study that supports most of what any decent local seo’er has been preaching for a while.

interesting that no description made no ranking change, but having a category in description did.

and review 5 makes a ranking difference, but not again until past 100. interesting stuff.

http://dagmarmarketing.com/ Chris Gregory

Aaron, I missed that number and would agree that 14,300 would be a valid sample data set. Thanks for clarifying.

http://twitter.com/EdmontonSEO Darren Shaw

Aaron, looking at the full report over on the Bizible site, you write:
“Having the primary category match a broader category of the search category was associated with a 1.42 improvement in rank. For example, primary category is set to “restaurant” and the search category was “pizza.”Just to clarify, is the search category ALSO one of the categories in the listing? For example, listings with ‘restaurant’ as their first category AND ‘pizza’ as an additional category were associated with a 1.42 improvement in ranking, or are you saying that listings with just ‘restaurant’ and NOT ‘pizza’ saw the 1.42 improvement in ranking?

http://twitter.com/BirdsTweets Aaron Bird

Darren,
We did not run the analysis with both signals tied together (like you are asking for), but looked at them in isolation. The statement “Having the primary category match a broader category of the search category was associated with a 1.42 improvement in rank.” is when all other signals are held constant, so it does not make a claim about the secondary categories (or any other signal for that matter.)

local SEO dude

Andrew, you mentioned this data is pre-Venice. Have you (or any else) noticed any difference due to Venice? (or maybe bizible will share in as they release their other findings)

http://twitter.com/localseoguide Andrew Shotland

I believe Bizible is going to do a post-Venice run of the data soon

http://www.eBizROI.com Rick Noel, eBiz ROI, Inc.

Excellent information Andrew. I always prefer a data-driven approach to Local SEO, global SEO or any Internet marketing tasks in general. The key issue to applying the stated findings becomes how can one influence the composition of the “at a glance” section of the Google Places local listing as this influential section is generated algorithmically according to Google Support (http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1344353). The information and findings you present would have greater value if accompanied by any insights into how the Google Places algorithm populates the “at a glance” section, otherwise the information, it’s value and ability to act on it is limited. If what David Mihm. said is true, namely that “the Given that the “at a glance” content is largely pulled from either traditional reviews or non-traditional reviews, seems like they found a much higher correlation for keywords in reviews than even your take lets on.” If David’s theory is true, one might try to influence reviews, but based on my experience, this observation seems to be only a small part of the “at a glance” population equation. I would be interested to know if anyone else has theories on how the “at a glance” population info gets sourced from besides reviews, which we arguable have limited influence on in many cases any? Thanks for sharing.

I don’t even know where to begin. The “findings” in this article are so wrong and misdirected, I am truly at a loss for words. The fact that this comes from someone who regards himself as a Local SEO consultant is shocking, to say the least. The author ought to be ashamed of himself, and how he can sleep at night having taken money from businesses for consultation and “help” with their Google Place Pages, I simply do not know. At least he manages to reiterate a few points that are common knowledge to those heavily involved with Local SEO, but that only adds to the comedy of the overall piece. I’m guessing this being the “PHD” version signifies that it’s Pretty Hard to Digest.